Ever since the general election was called, many many years ago, I’ve been meaning to write some kind of blog post about it. But every time I have sat down to do so, the words simply haven’t come. I’ve not been able to think of anything I can say about the whole goddamn process which hasn’t been said elsewhere, many times and probably with better research.
Even the media coverage of the election, which is more my area than the politics, has been discussed to death, then we’ve sat around talking at its corpse like mad bastards. But today is Election Day, which means its now or never for that topical blog session.
And, fortunately, I’ve recently seen this. That apparently is the genuine front page of the Sun news paper tomorrow. (And even more brilliantly, this was one of their stories of the day.) In fairness, none of the papers are exactly looking unbiased. And, perhaps foolishly, I genuinely find myself asking “How did it come to this?”
Seriously, when did we reach the point that they can report their biases as an actual substitute for news? Well, as often happens when I try to discuss news reporting, Charlie Brooker’s Newswipe made my point much better. In particular in this video, from about 2:00 to 4:30.
But the trends he mentions, newspapers becoming increasingly dependent on campaigns and “opinion”, has become horribly, tragically, brutally obvious in the last month. Seriously, I’m sure it used to be a game. You’d read a Guardian piece and, yes, it would be somewhat left-leaning but at least it wouldn’t be a fucking obvious polemic.
And yeah, The Sun has always had an agenda, but it’s impressive how they’ve basically remove any pretence at communicating information and replaced their front page with Tory campaign posters.
Is this what newspapers have to do to survive? Will they cut this out once the election is over? Has it actually always been this bad and I’ve only just now noticed? Do I know the answer to any of these questions? Obviously not.
Anyhoo. Don’t let the newsbastards get you down. Go out and vote, innit. Then wait and see what happens next.
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